Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Tag: legalization of marijuana

Today, the Dept. of Justice finally announced its first official response to the dramatic changes underway at the state level with respect to legalizing marijuana.

As a matter of law, a direct legal challenge to the state initiatives approved by voters in Colorado and Washington would have failed. A basic principle of constitutional law is that the federal government cannot “commandeer” the state legislatures and tell them what laws they should pass and what laws they can repeal. The state laws that legalize marijuana are not obstructing the FBI or DEA from enforcing federal law – and that’s the key test.

As a matter of policy, if the Obama administration is not yet ready to admit that the drug war is a failed policy, it should at least respect the prerogatives of the states that are choosing to legalize marijuana in their respective jurisdictions. Today’s announcement is an important step in that direction.

Uruguay’s House of Deputies voted today to allow the production, commercialization, and distribution of cannabis, taking the first step to becoming the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana. Even though Uruguay never criminalized personal consumption, this vote, passed 50-46, is a much bolder move.

The bill is a more elaborate piece of legislation than the draft introduced to the Uruguayan congress a year ago, which had only one article giving the state the power to regulate the cannabis market. Initially, the government contemplated creating a state-owned monopoly in the production and sale of the drug. The bill approved today provides for a private but strictly regulated market for cannabis. Uruguayans will be able to grow their own pot (up to six plants) or they can join membership clubs which can also grow their own marijuana (up to 99 plants). All crops require prior government authorization.

Also, Uruguayans will be able to buy marijuana from authorized drug stores (up to 40 grams per month). In order to do so, they will have to join a National Registry of Users. Even though the bill stipulates that the registry will be private and the information there is considered “sensitive,” there are good reasons to believe that not many people will rush to a government agency to register as a marijuana user. People under 18 years of age won’t be able to legally access marijuana and all forms of advertisement of the drug are prohibited.

The bill is now headed to the Senate where it is expected to pass. Once it becomes the law of the land, Uruguay will become the world’s standard-bearer of drug policy reform. Even though the country is small and it’s not beset by the plight of drug-related violence seen in Mexico or Central America, Uruguay’s marijuana legalization constitutes a momentous step in the road to dismantling the international prohibitionist regime that has been in place since the 1960s. Marijuana legalization bills have already been introduced in the legislatures of countries such as Chile and Mexico. And let’s not forget that cannabis was legalized last November (via referendum) in Colorado and Washington State.

The Obama administration faces a choice: it may either obstruct the momentum toward reform, or it may engage Latin American countries in an open debate about how to end a failed policy that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the region. That would be change we can believe in.

In his high school yearbook photo, President Barack Obama sports a white leisure suit and a Travolta-esque collar whose wingspan could put a bystander’s eye out. Hey, it was 1979.

Maybe that explains the rest of young Barry’s yearbook page, with its “still life” featuring a pack of rolling papers and a shout-out to the “Choom gang.” (“Chooming” is Hawaiian slang for smoking pot.)

Survey data suggest some 100 million Americans have tried pot, including political elites and drug war supporters Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. So the point here isn’t to play “gotcha” by calling the president out on some harmless fun three decades ago. It’s to ask why he isn’t doing more to change a policy that treats people engaged in such activities as criminals.

As I note in the column,

in his new National Drug Control Strategy [.pdf], Obama “firmly opposes the legalization of marijuana or any other illicit drug” and boasts of his administration’s aggressive approach to pot eradication. Watch your back, Choom Gang.

This may present Obama with a serious moral dilemma if and when California votes to legalize recreational use of marijuana this November. (More here in this podcast).